The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson

Ellen Baker’s 2024 historical novel, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson, employs a dual-timeline narrative to excavate the long-buried secrets of a Minnesota family. The story begins in 2015 when 94-year-old Cecily Larson’s hip fracture sets off a chain of events that culminates in a family DNA test, revealing that Cecily has no biological connection to the daughter she raised and unraveling a lifetime of deception that forces three generations of women to confront their true origins. Intermittently, the narrative shifts back in time to trace Cecily’s journey from a Chicago orphanage to a 1930s traveling circus and then to a North Carolina reformatory. Throughout these timelines, the novel explores the themes of The Trauma of Coerced Family Separation, The Cost of Protecting Loved Ones, and Survival Through Chosen Family. Selected for the Maine Public Book Club in 2024, Baker’s narrative explores identity through the lens of unexpected DNA discoveries.

This guide refers to the 2024 Mariner Books edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of racism, rape, child abuse, child sexual abuse, pregnancy loss or termination, illness, death, infant death, kidnapping, physical abuse, emotional abuse, substance use, addiction, cursing, and sexual content.

Plot Summary

In 2015 Itasca, Minnesota, Liz Anderson receives the dreaded call that her 94-year-old mother, Cecily Larson, has fallen and broken her hip. Liz, a widow still grieving the sudden death of her husband, Dean, rushes to the hospital. Cecily, fiercely independent, now faces a long recovery that will force her out of the home she has lived in for nearly 70 years. Liz’s daughter and Cecily’s granddaughter, Molly Bouchard, a therapist and single mother to teenager Caden, also joins them. 

For a school biology project, Caden wants to analyze the DNA of four generations of his family. Seeing it as a perfect birthday gift for Cecily, Liz and Molly order the kits to test Cecily, Liz, Molly, and Caden. While packing belongings for Cecily, Liz discovers a mysterious, old black-and-white photograph hidden in her mother’s underwear drawer. It shows a serious-looking young man, possibly African American, with the name “Lucky” written on the back. Meanwhile, Molly’s ex-husband, Evan Bouchard, arrives for Caden’s hockey tournament and, finding all hotels booked, agrees to stay at Cecily’s empty house to keep an eye on it. The family, grappling with Cecily’s sudden fragility, unknowingly sets in motion a series of revelations that will unravel their entire history.

The DNA test results arrive, and the family’s world is turned upside down. Caden’s analysis shows that Liz, Molly, and Caden share no biological connection to Cecily. Liz and Molly are stunned, initially convinced Ancestry made a mistake. The results also show that Liz is almost exclusively of German descent, contradicting the family’s belief that her father, Sam Larson, was fully Norwegian. Days later, a new alert arrives: Cecily has a parent/child DNA match with a woman named Clarissa Duncan, born in 1936. This proves the sample was not mixed up. Liz and Molly confront Cecily, who, after a lifetime of silence, confesses a staggering secret. She is not Liz’s biological mother. 

Her story begins in 1924, when her own mother, Madeline, left her at a Chicago orphanage. At seven, Cecily was sold to the Sax & Tebow Circus to become a bareback rider under the name Jacqueline DuMonde. As a teenager in 1935, she fell in love with a young Black roustabout named Moses Washington Green, nicknamed “Lucky.” Their secret romance ended when Lucky, fearing for their safety in the Jim Crow South, disappeared. Soon after, Cecily discovered she was pregnant. Her close friend in the circus, Isabelle, betrayed her, having her arrested and sent to a North Carolina reformatory. From there, she was transferred to the McNaughton Children’s Home, a facility for unwed mothers. After a traumatic birth on May 8, 1936, the director, Dr. Addington, told her the baby died and sterilized her without her consent, a common practice under the state’s eugenics laws. 

Devastated, Cecily escaped and was rescued by a kind woman named Grace, who nursed her back to health and helped her get to New York City. Years later, after losing a job in Newport, Rhode Island, and living unhoused on the streets of Providence, Cecily was admitted to a sanatorium when she contracted tuberculosis. While there, she met and fell in love with Dr. Sam Larson. Eventually, she told him her story but refused to marry him because she was incapable of having children. However, in 1947, she and Sam discovered a car crash in a snowstorm; the parents were dead, but their five-month-old baby, Mary Elizabeth Myer, survived. They quickly married, adopted the baby, renamed her Elizabeth Grace Larson, and moved to Itasca. Thus, they created a new life based on the lie that Liz was their biological child to spare her the pain of knowing her tragic origins.

In a parallel narrative, 79-year-old Clarissa Duncan lives in Kure Beach, North Carolina. Her daughter, Lana, a professor studying racial identity, persuades Clarissa and her other daughter, Kate, a former actress in recovery from an alcohol addiction, to take DNA tests. Clarissa was raised by a wealthy Kentucky family who disowned her as a young woman when she gave birth to Lana, whose skin was darker than expected. In that moment, they revealed to Clarissa that she was adopted and that her birth mother was Sicilian. The DNA results shatter this story: Clarissa is Cecily’s daughter, and she is approximately 40% of African descent, confirming her father was Black. Lana and Kate are thus biracial. Ecstatic and overwhelmed, Lana emails the Ancestry account connected to Cecily. Molly facilitates an emotional first phone call between Cecily and her long-lost daughter, Clarissa. The revelations continue as Clarissa’s DNA connects her to the children of Moses “Lucky” Green, who, it turns out, had another family in Chicago. Lucky died of a heart attack in 1972, but his daughter Reyna shares his old notebooks, which contain a poem he wrote about Cecily on the very day Clarissa was born, proving he never forgot his first love.

The intertwined families plan a reunion in Chicago. Molly, Caden, and Evan drive Cecily from Minnesota to meet Clarissa, Kate, and Lana at the site of the orphanage where Cecily’s story began. Later, they all gather at Lucky’s grave with his other children and grandchildren. The meeting is a bittersweet fusion of joy and grief for lost time. Cecily, looking at her newfound family and seeing Lucky’s features in his descendants, finds a sense of peace. She realizes that she “never had stopped believing in impossible things” (360), and holding Lucky’s poem, that their love, against all odds, endured and multiplied. Meanwhile, Liz, who is battling a breast cancer diagnosis at home, struggles to forgive Cecily and Sam for their lifelong deception. She connects with her remaining biological family, slowly piecing together her identity. 

The story’s epilogue reveals the actions of Ethel Oglethorpe, the matron at the McNaughton Home in 1936. Disturbed by Dr. Addington’s cruelty, she chose not to report Cecily’s escape. She created a death certificate for “Jacqueline DuMonde” and a falsified birth certificate for “Clarissa Ann Duncan,” along with a fabricated letter claiming Italian heritage to explain the baby’s features. 

In the aftermath, the families find their new normal. Evan moves to Itasca to be with Molly and Caden, and they move into Cecily’s house to care for her. In North Carolina, Kate, finding strength in her new family connections, receives a message from the son she gave up for adoption as a teenager, and they joyfully connect for the first time. Liz, recovering from successful cancer treatment, begins to understand the love that motivated Cecily’s and Sam’s choices, starting on the path toward forgiveness.